Technical Field
This disclosure relates to the field of multichannel communications. In particular, to a system that enhances spatialization.
Related Art
Some voice communication has been carried out over a single audio channel and often over a narrow band of the audio spectrum, between 200 Hz and 3500 Hz. This has lead to a situation where voice communications have become a necessity but are rarely enjoyable and in some cases are actually difficult to understand. When the voice communication is paired with a video feed (i.e., in a video conferencing system) the low quality voice communication can significantly degrade the overall user experience.
Some video conferencing systems alternatively can use a single microphone or an array of microphones. In the single microphone system the voices of all speakers will be mixed equally, assuming an equal signal level at the microphone, into a single mono output. In the multiple microphone system, the microphone signals can be mixed to produce a single mono output or, alternatively two or more microphone signals can be mixed to produce a simple stereo output (i.e., a left microphone is mixed to the left channel and vice versa).
The spatial information (e.g., the relative physical positions of the speakers) is neither well represented in the output signal nor presented at the other end of the video conference. This can be confusing or annoying for participants at the other end as the voices coming out of loudspeakers do not have a spatial layout that corresponds to the apparent positions of the speakers on the video display device.